“We continue to monitor the situation in Cyprus, which remains fluid,” said Kathleen Perchaluk, spokeswoman for Jim Flaherty, the Canadian Finance Minister. “It is important that the Europeans take the necessary steps to deal with sovereign debt issues while securing financial stability. The situation highlights the importance of Europe advancing efforts on a full banking union, which they have been making progress on.”
[snip…]
Experts say Canadians have little to fear they could ever face a similar penalty, given the strength of the Canadian banking system and the relative strength of the Canadian economy.
“The World Economic Forum has ranked Canada’s banks as the soundest in the world for five years in a row and Canadians have confidence that their deposits are safe and sound,” said Rachel Swiednicki, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Bankers Association.
Recently I posted Arrow’s article at the Vancouver Sun concerning Peter Hogg’s letter to Finance Canada on LinkedIn. I just read a very interesting response from Jeff Mukadi, a Toronto tax law and compliance professional. (All emphases are mine).
He has published an article, ““FATCA Getting Rid of U.S. Clients Will Not Get You Off the Grid,” Journal of International Taxation, November 2012. He argues that foreign citizens affected by FATCA should bring their governments to court through class action suits to invalidate FATCA/IGA’s for unconstitutionality. He discussed some excerpts of the article; and makes a very strong case for the absence of reciprocity and true quid pro quo. “Reciprocity is not simply an exchange of one thing for anything, but one right for the same right and one obligation for the same obligation.” As we all know, this is simply not what the US is “offering.”
What is most interesting is his suggestion that FATCA cannot be implemented in Canada not only because of our privacy laws but more importantly, because of the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (R.S.C., 1985, c.F-29). This Act was designed specifically to “deny effect to extraterritorial Acts of foreign governments violating Canadian sovereignty.” The US National Defense Authorization Act (“Cuban Assets Control Regulations,” July 8, 1963) was such a measure and prompted the issue of the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (United States) Order of October 9, 1992 (SOR-92-584). By authority of the Canadian Attorney General jointly with the Secretary of State for External Affairs, SOR-92-584 prohibited a Canadian corporation, or director, officer, manager, or employee in a position of authority of a Canadian corporation, from complying with this U.S. law. So in addition to not joining the “Coalition of the Willing” in 2003, we have another instance of Canada standing up to the US. Mr. Mukadi emphasizes the fact that since FATCA is even more agressive than the US National Defense Authorization Act, “it is certain that SOR-92-584 will always be invoked as a precedent against any attempt to implement or enforce FATCA in Canada.” Since governments are not taking care of their primary duty, that of defending their sovereignty and protecting citizens, it might be easier to fight FATCA in the courts. And until this happens, we cannot know if we can be safe from FATCA.
He indicated he would send me the article so I hope I can pass on more. I also contacted Allison Christians to see if we could get her take on it. In any regard, this sounds like another specific “weapon” we can use in this fight and I believe we should let our government know we are aware of it.
UPDATE: Mr. Mukadi has kindly provided a copy of his article: FATCA JOIT Article November 2012 – Final Galleys Mukadi FATCA
This is a re-post of a mass emailing by James Jatras of RepealFATCA.com which was sent out over the weekend. If it was mentioned on IBS, I might have missed it. Thought it should get headline billing here, so it is picked up by other FATCA watchers.
March 17, 2013: Canada signs TIEA (Tax Information Exchange Agreement with Panama) http://t.co/CVGQJi1T31 – Prelude to #FATCA IGA?
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) March 18, 2013
Ottawa Citizen article mentioning #offshore tax cheats is likely Gov propaganda piece to justify #FATCA IGA http://t.co/3dhUmgw5sT
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) March 18, 2013
An interesting article was posted today in Chinese: http://big5.soundofhope.org/node/320710.
Here is the Google translation:
2013-03-17 02:28:58
The green card has always been a symbol of the “American Dream”, but in early 2013, the United States resorted to FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) locking overseas income tax inspection, commonly known as “fat cats Act set off a celebrity and rich to abandon green card and U.S. citizenship The wave of the mainland’s richest man, Wahaha Group Chairman Zong recently renounced U.S. citizenship.
These high-income “tax refugee” nationality have moved back to the country, or transferred to countries with lower tax rates; renounce U.S. citizenship, however, still liquidate the property to pay the exit tax, and many of the National People’s Congress of the American dream from the “dream” change ” nightmare. “
The disposable green card predominantly Chinese
French composer in the movie “Green Card”, which, in order to live and work in the United States, at great pains sham marriages in an attempt to fool the immigration officer, only to get a green card. However, with the United States FATCA bill on the road, there are many rich must deliberately with a green card, “said Bai Bai”, which is a continent rich.
“World News” reported that, in the case of “taxing” the wealthy Americans to give up the green card or citizenship case continued to increase, which Chinese majority. IRS statistics show that, to give up the American’s more than 1,500 people annually from 2008 to 2011, according to the quarterly published abandon nationals who found, a very high proportion of Chinese surnames.
Under U.S. law, U.S. citizens and permanent resident green card holder, whether living in the world where to be for overseas income tax. In March 2010, the United States to strengthen tax collection, enacted FATCA aims to crack down on overseas tax evasion, and the rules officially launched in early 2013.
This page is intended as a place to cite the portions of Constitutions, Charters, Declarations and the like that prohibit discrimination on the basis of national origin. Many of us have often argued –at IBS, Maple, and elsewhere– that prohibiting participation in certain types of financial accounts and/or applying additional tax to income and/or wealth and/or forcing particular reporting requirements to a foreign jurisdiction upon people living and paying taxes in a country protected by one or more of these documents constitutes discrimination on the basis of national and/or ethnic origin. FATCA, FBAR and Double Taxation are thus largely unenforceable.
Friday 15 March 2013 – ‘Where is the evidence my son was a terrorist?’
Mohamed Sakr was stripped of his British citizenship for alleged Islamist activity and killed in a drone strike. His parents tell Chris Woods they have yet to be shown any proof of his guilt.
You get extradited back to the US. Or you get killed abroad in a drone strike. Being stripped of your citizenship was merely a way of absolving your government of your murder. As a man or woman without a country, you don’t exist in the eyes of nation-states, and thus you can be murdered by any government and no other government will raise an eyebrow.
The United Nations has raised another challenge to Obama’s drone policy in Pakistan, saying that it continues to kill innocent civilians because operators have difficulty discerning civilians apart from terrorists.
For drone assassinations lacking a fair trial, America doesn’t even need to silently strip the citizenship of the so-called “tax cheats”, “snot pukes”, “traitors”, “unpatriotic”, “pieces of crap” people who want to live normal lives outside of US jurisdiction. These are all titles rewarded to individuals who choose not to be American citizens for whatever reason. Most of these, I collected from just one single article talking about Saverin. Did I remember to include the “terrorist” label? Notice that in all three articles, none of the accusations are supported with any evidence to justify their careless usage.
It appears that no proof of guilt is needed to justify the assassination of anyone given such a fancy title. They are, after all, “snot pukes”!
If it says anything at all, your once-government lies and says that you were a high profile terrorist.
You are now a confirmed kill.
Press silence continues in New Zealand related to FATCA and IGAs. The last article I have seen, anywhere, was this posting back in October, 2012 on Interest. co. nz. Title: “New Zealand will seek to negotiate tax information agreement with US over ‘FATCA’ law NZ banks had feared would cost them NZ$100 mln” (If the link only takes you to the front page, just do a search on their site using the title, or FATCA.)
I have been in correspondence with a Kiwi/US dual citizen, who made a submission to the NZ IRD ‘working group’ to provide comments about why New Zealand should NOT sign up to a FATCA IGA. I will not post his submission in the interest of brevity. However, below is their response back to him which was NOT encouraging. Names and personal references have been eliminated to protect the innocent! 🙂
Switzerland’s largest political party, SVP, voted against FATCA. The no vote was then followed by the Greens. Together with the Social Democrats (SP), the three parties make up the political majority. The SP, wanting reciprocity through model I, is selling its vote at a high cost, pushing the federal council to make compromises which lead to reciprocity.
Die SP treibt wieder das alte Spielchen
…Die SP versucht, ihre Zustimmung möglichst teuer zu verkaufen, in diesem Fall möglichst viele Zugeständnisse zu erreichen und den Bundesrat auf eine Linie zu zwingen, die zu einem automatischen Informationsaustausch führt. Dies kann sie tun, weil die SVP und die Grünen das Fatca-Abkommen kategorisch ablehnen. Denn die Fraktionen von SVP, SP und den Grünen kommen im Nationalrat zusammen auf 117 Stimmen, was eine komfortable Mehrheit ist…
